Charlie Hynes has a lot of helicopters, and he found an easier way to assemble pushrods and ball links, using his cordless drill. Check out his how to!

A lot of helicopters come with ball links and pushrods that need to be assembled by hand. Here’s how you can use a drill motor instead of pliers to assemble them.

First chuck the pushrod into the drill and spun it slowly while you hold the ball link until it gets too tight and wants to spin with the rod. Releasing finger pressure allows the ball link to spin without damaging it.

Then open the chuck just enough to get the first ball link on the pushrod in past the jaws and tighten it up again on just the pushrod until the ball link fits behind the jaws. The second ball link goes on the same as the first, as long as there is at least 1 inch of unthreaded rod between the threaded ends. It works on any length pushrod, even the one going along the tail boom in the holders. Just put the first ball link aft and push it out past the tail to allow the ball link to go into the jaws and add the ball link in front.

I use a caliper to set the final length for most of the pushrods. Usually it just takes a few twists by hand to get the exact length I need.

It takes just a few minutes to make up all of the pushrods and my hands don’t ache afterward. With 7 helicopters in my stable, making the pushrods for most is the easiest part of the assembly!